Novels

What a month January was!

Virgin Hall made its initial debut at Full Circle Book Store in Oklahoma City. Full Circle, owned by Jim Tolbert, is one of those wonderful, chock-full-o-books stores with fireplaces, good coffee, and a café manned by people who know what’s between the covers.

Since OKC is my home town, the well-attended signing looked like a high school reunion! My stay there was fun and a chance to catch up with a host of old friends. We also sold books! Joining me on the podium was Anita Fream, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma.

A huge shout out to all the people who made these events possible, both at the venues and at the affiliates.

February will be just as busy.

I’m looking forward to two book signings, both arranged by my Pi Beta Phi sister, Joan Talbert. The first, on February 24 in Herndon, is at her jazzercise group’s book club—aren’t you impressed they are taking care of their minds as well as their bodies? The second on February 28th in Leesburg is with the Potomac Falls Club of Pi Beta Phi.

For women like me, who came to maturity before the 1960s, the specter of illegal and unsafe abortion is as much of a horror as the reaction of those who view a terminated pregnancy as murder. In those days there was no “pill” and the only means of obtaining a contraceptive device was through a doctor, with the exception of condoms.

As a young woman I remember both the stories and the many articles in women’s magazines that documented what happened to women who sought to end a pregnancy before there was anywhere safe to do so. Many of the doctors who went through that time and dealt with the cases of sepsis they saw in the hospitals were among the staunchest supporters for ending the illegality of abortion. They were forced in some circumstances to act illegally, even going to jail to save the life of a woman. Of course, I can also understand how a doctor like, Dr. Ron Paul, could come to the opposite conclusion and want a ban on all such procedures.

In reality, abortion has been with us as long as pregnancy and will be with us whether the anti-abortion forces are successful or not. Better, I believe, as President Clinton said, to have abortion be “safe, legal and rare.”

Over the years since Roe v. Wade I have watched the strategy of the anti-abortion crowd. I might point out that the advocates of Roe were for the most part women, and the leaders of the anti-abortion group are most often men.

The first thing the anti-abortion people had to face was that the majority of Americans were not supportive of their cause. By the end of the 1970s they discovered that the only time they were successful on a ballot issue limiting abortion was if it was tied someway to funding. Americans didn’t mind abortion. They minded paying for it.

There was only so much they could do on this kind of effort. They continued a frontal assault state by state which either failed at the ballot box or in the courts. Their position was essentially unconstitutional in the view of the courts. Failing in this, they began to chip away at abortion. State by state they instituted onerous regulations on the procedure, resulting in laws that were scientifically unsustainable and physically ridiculous. This had some effect, but certainly did not preclude the procedures.

They are now trying, with bills in legislatures, to declare, against all science, that life begins at the meeting of sperm and egg. Where they are successful, many forms of birth control and in-vitro fertilization will be outlawed. In Virgin Hall I wanted to show what it was like before Roe. If legislators affirm life at fertilization—it will be that way again.

Janet Taliaferro has written far more than a cautionary tale about the long-armed reach of addiction. A Sky for Arcadia should hold a place on the required reading list of anyone prepared to take a clear-eyed look at not only the primary, but the tertiary damage any substance abuse visits upon relationships and honesty and self-knowledge.

No matter what your experience in this arena might include, you will learn something that surprises you. You are likely also to identify with some portion of your own personal experience, whether it be first hand or through a more casual affiliation.

Janet’s cast of characters experience a range of life’s complexities and capriciousness as well as their own culpability. She reminds us, with a quiet tone of compassion, how human and imperfect we can be, and how despite everything, it is possible to meet life’s challenges with every hope of a fully acceptable, not tragically narrow, outcome.

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I write novels, poetry, and short stories. In broad-brush terms, I have written about alcohol and drug addiction, and more importantly, recovery and the influence of twelve-step programs, incest, racial and religious tolerance, abortion, and war.
In previous lives I was a political activist and business owner and have remained an avid Planned Parenthood supporter over the years. I graduated from Southern Methodist University and hold a Master’s Degree in Creative Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma, where I received the Geoffrey Bocca Memorial Award for graduate writing.